Mieczysław Weinberg - String Quartets Vol. 3 (Quatuor Danel)

Information

Composer: Mieczysław Weinberg

• (01) String Quartet No. 6 in E minor, Op. 35
• (07) String Quartet No. 8, Op. 66
• (08) String Quartet No. 15, Op. 124

Quatuor Danel
Marc Danel, violin
Gilles Millet, violin
Vlad Bogdanas, viola
Guy Danel, cello

Date: 2009
Label: cpo

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Review

PERFORMANCE: ***** / SOUND: *****

Astonishing though it may seem, Mieczys√aw Weinberg’s Sixth Quartet had to wait over 60 years before receiving what is believed to have been its world premiere performance by the Quatuor Danel in January 2007.

Composed during the troubled post-war cultural climate of the Soviet Union in 1946, it fell victim to proscription by Joseph Stalin’s notorious cultural henchman Andrei Zhdanov two years later and thereafter was unfairly consigned
to the dustbin of history. Yet on the evidence of this extraordinary compelling and beautifully recorded performance, it’s an extremely powerful and deeply affecting work.

Conceived on an epic symphonic scale in six strongly defined movements, the Sixth encompasses a huge gamut of emotions from the almost brutal Shostakovichian violence and intensity of the middle of the opening Allegro semplice to the eerie disembodied sounds that appear at the end of the fifth movement. To my mind, this is one of the finest of the entire cycle brimming with distinctive musical ideas that have an immediate impact.

The other two quartets in the Quatuor Danel’s latest release are much more elusive, and perhaps should be experienced outside the orbit of the Sixth. Both have wonderful moments, especially the more elegiac Eighth. Outstandingly dedicated performances.

-- Erik Levi, BBC Music Magazine

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mieczysław Weinberg (8 December 1919 in Warsaw – 26 February 1996 in Moscow) was a Soviet composer of Polish-Jewish origin. From 1939 he lived in the Soviet Union and Russia and lost most of his family in the Holocaust. He left a large body of work that included twenty-two symphonies and seventeen string quartets. Weinberg's works frequently have a strong programmatic element. Throughout his life, he continually referred back to his formative years in Warsaw and to the war. Although he never formally studied with Shostakovich, the older composer had an obvious influence on Weinberg's music.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mieczys%C5%82aw_Weinberg

***

Quatuor Danel is a French string quartet which was founded in June 1991. The quartet trained under the guidance of the Amadeus Quartet, the Borodin Quartet, Feodor Druzhinin of the Beethoven Quartet, and also with Pierre Penassou and Walter Levin of the LaSalle Quartet. The Danel Quartet's repertoire includes classical as well as contemporary music. They are specialized in the Russian repertoire; they have recorded the quartets by Shostakovich and Weinberg (world premiere). Since 2005, the Danel Quartet is "quartet in residence" at the University of Manchester, and since 2016, at Tivoli Vredenburg Utrecht.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quatuor_Danel
http://www.quatuordanel.eu/

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

FLAC, tracks

Links in comment

Enjoy!